In traditional lottery games, lottery players walk into convenience retailers, manually fill out selection slips, and exchange cash or credit with a clerk, who then enters the selections into a lottery terminal. This lottery terminal electronically connects to a central lottery system which manages the lottery games. The central game system then issues a coded lottery ticket, and the lottery ticket is delivered to the lottery players through the local lottery terminal at the retailer. To play lottery games administered by governmental entities such as countries, states, provinces or multi-state lottery associations, lottery players are required to travel to retailers and sometimes wait in line to purchase lottery tickets.
Numerous interactive games on the Internet are now available. These include both games of skill or games of chance (wager) such as virtual casinos. However, lottery games such as lotteries offered by the governmental entities have not been made available on the Internet. One reason may be concern regarding security and fraud as to forged winning tickets. Also, it may be more difficult to verify play criteria such as the age or residence of the lottery players. If governmental entities' lottery tickets can be purchased by players over publicly accessible electronic or telephonic network such as the Internet, it can be anticipated that many more players will participate in the lottery. Many more tickets will be sold and awards will be much larger. If online lottery play of a governmental lottery is possible, other features such as subscription play wherein players subscribe to a periodic play of same numbers can be added, thereby making lottery gaming even more attractive.
Therefore, a need exists for a lottery agent system which facilitates lottery play of governmental lotteries via an electronic network such as through the Internet. A need also exists for a lottery agent system which makes available through the electronic network the purchase of governmental lottery tickets and facilities additional features such as subscription play and instant play.